Automation Adventures

Last Saturday my iPod froze up. After applying the reset (Hold on, Hold off, press and hold Menu and Select at the same time), the screen displayed the Sad iPod Icon. Fearing my podcast and audio book listening days were not over but put on indefinite hiatus, I drove home and entered the URL the iPod displayed: http://www.apple.com/support/ipod.

The results there were less than encouraging: try and reconnect your iPod to the computer (sorry, problem didn’t occur while connecting to the computer), or send it in for repairs. Well, we’re talking an almost 4 year old iPod here, so any repairs would probably cost more than the iPod is worth (heck the shipping cost is probably more than it’s worth…!). So I decided to use Google to see if anyone had an alternative solution.

This leads me to a Digg article, that pointed to an article “How To Fix an Ipod with the Sad iPod Icon” on Spilling Coffee. The basic solution boils down to:

1. Put something on your desk (a stack of paper works great) to prevent your desk from getting damaged (don’t worry about the iPod)
2. Grab the iPod firmly, with the connector pointing down
3. Slam it on the stack of papers on your desk

The idea is that the hard disk connector can come lose enough not to make connection anymore, but still be attached enough that a good bang will snap it back into place.

So with a heavy heart and closed eyes I banged my iPod on the desk and performed another reset. Lo and behold, the menu appeared! And faster than it had done on previous resets!! Thanks Tom Coffee!

Warning: banging your iPod on your desk may cause damage to desk, iPod, or anything else in the vicinity. It worked for me, but it may not work for you. Banging your iPod is a serious form of Apple fan-dom…

Tags: bang, connector, disk, ipod, sad

Yesterday Apple had its September presentation, which, as the title “Let’s Rock” may have given away, was focused on iTunes and the various iPod models. Here are the announcements in a nutshell:

• HD TV shows added to the iTunes store. $2.99 per episode ($1.99 for standard definition), and you can view them on Apple TV and your computer (and hopefully you iPod).
• NBC returns to the iTunes store.
• iTunes 8 is announced:
  • New browsing options
  • Genius mode: automatic playlist based on songs that “go great together”. It sounds like Pandora in iTunes.
• iPod classic: the current line up of an 80GB and a 160GB model will be changed to one 120GB model, priced at $250 (what, not $249?).
• iPod Nano 4G:
  • has the form factor of the Nano 2G
  • the video of the 3G
  • Built-in accelerometer
  • new User Interface
  • landscape mode for coverflow
  • thinnest Nano yet
  • $149 for 8GB, $199 for 16GB
• iPod Touch:
  • Thinner
  • has integrated volume control
  • built-in speaker(!)
  • Genius playlist creation
  • Nike+ built-in (you still need the Nike+ transmitter)
  • $229 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB, and $399 for 32GB
• AppStore: 100 million downloads in the first 60 days. Upcoming offerings: Spore Origins, Real Soccer 2009, Need for Speed: Undercover.
• Two new headphones:
  • A regular set with in-band control (volume, next, prev, play, pause) and microphone for $29
  • An in-ear set with two drivers per bud (woofer and tweeter) for $79
• iPod Touch 2.1 software: Free upgrade for 2.0 users, $9.95 for 1.x users
• iPhone 2.1 software:
  • Free upgrade
  • improved battery life
  • fewer call drops
  • fewer crashes
  • increased speed for iTunes backups

It sounds that Apple is slowly retiring the iPod classic, and adding more emphasis on the AppStore. More news can be read at Gizmodo and other sites around the net.

Tags: apple, appstore, iphone, ipod, itouch, itunes, nano

This week my car was in the shop, and as a loaner vehicle I had a 2008 Ford Focus, with Ford and Microsoft’s new Sync system.

The car itself is OK. I normally drive a Ford Taurus, so the Focus is a little smaller, but I used to drive a Renault Clio back in the Netherlands, so I’ve got no problems with a smaller car. Actually, in about the 3 days I was driving it, I managed to get the average MPG up from 25 something to around 31.6. Not amazing, but better than the 19+ MPG we get out of the Freestar, and the 22-24 MPG for the Taurus.

You can tell the Focus is the low-end model of the Ford line-up. The sun visor feels a little cheap, there are some other things that make the car feel less sturdy, and whoever designed the cupholder inserts has never put a cup in one – and tried to remove it (hint: I think the rubber insert should stay in the cupholder, not around the cup as a misformed bottle warmer.

On to the tech part – the Sync system. Sync is a voice-controlled system to control phone and audio. A wide range of phones and audio devices (read: portable MP3 players and the likes) are supposed to work with it. I have a BlackBerry Pearl 8130 and a 3rd gen iPod, pretty standard equipment, so I didn’t expect any problems.

The pairing of the phone over Bluetooth went smooth. And every time I started the car, it connected to the phone quickly and without intervention. The only time I had an issue was when I got in the car around 11:15PM, and Sync didn’t connect to my phone. It took me a minute to remember that the phone turns itself off after 11PM…

Hooking up the iPod to the Sync system was a little more complicated. The steps in the Sync manual describing how to connect your music player through a USB cable – didn’t work. The system maintained there was no music player. After a little bit of fiddling in the menus I managed to tell Sync it really

had a music player. After that, I was able to select songs, artists, albums, genres etc., but my play lists were completely missing. At least I was able to play music and the likes! But my confidence in the manual was pretty much gone.

And then the issues started:

• I like listening to podcasts. Some of them are pretty long. And I don’t like leaving my iPod in the car. However, when you stop the engine and the Sync system, or disconnect the iPod, it loses track of where it was in the “song”. The only option you have is to fast-forward to the point where you left off – a fast-forward that only skips 5 seconds at a time, at a speed of roughly 10 seconds skipped per real time second. To get back to 1 hour and 15 minutes into the podcast, I had to press the fast forward button for about 8 minutes. On top of that, roughly after every 20 minutes of the “song”, the fast-forward stops, like it thinks you can’t be serious about skipping that much of the “song”.
• While I was listening to some music, I received a phone call. I was able to answer the phone call, and talk to the person on the other side. The music had stopped. After terminating the call, I was still in the phone menu. The voice commands were now focused on the phone, not on the media. It took me roughly 3 minutes of yelling at the voice system and pushing buttons to get my music to play again. At least it continued where I left off.
• The “Help” command in the voice system can be handy, but at times is completely useless. I use voice recognition because I’m driving. The system knows I’m driving, because I’m not allowed to do certain setup options. Then why, pray tell, does it tell me after asking for “Help” 2 options, one of which is to “see the manual”??? Should I whip it out and read it while I’m doing 65MPH? Not a very safe suggestion.
• To this day I cannot ask the system to play an artist or album. I can play genres, but only if I select it through the button menu. The voice system claims no knowledge of any music on my system, be it an
  artist or a genre. Apparently it is supposed to index your music files, after which these voice commands work. But: “Indexing” doesn’t appear in the Sync manual index, and neither does “Factory defaults” and some other useful options.

The Sync system is a very useful idea. It aims to keep your hands on the wheel, and the heads-up display helps keep an eye on the road. But it misses its goal when I have to fumble around on the dashboard because the voice recognition can’t switch from phone to media, or recognize half of the commands. My phone is equipped with voice dialing, and does a great job of understanding me (I can even call my wife, who has the same unpronounceable last name as me – and the Pearl understands who I want). I can’t believe the Sync system has such a hard time.

All in all, it feels like a Microsoft Windows product. It looks OK, but not very intuitive. It halfway works, but I’m waiting for version 2.0. At least it didn’t blue screen on me….

Tags: blackberry, bluetooth, focus, ford, ipod, microsoft, sync, voice

Somewhere along the upgrade trail from 7.3 to 7.4.2, I started getting the annoying message “iTunes was not properly installed. If you wish to import or burn CDs, you need to reinstall iTunes” whenever I start iTunes. After following this advice, and restarting iTunes, I got the message “iTunes was not properly installed. If…” – OK, you got the idea…

Apparently a lot of other people seem to be having this problem. And it happens under Vista 32 and 64 bit. Despite the message, people are reporting that importing works fine (I haven’t seen any messages confirming that burning a CD still works).

A discussion thread on the Apple Support forum helped me out: simply installing the GEAR Software drivers seemed to resolve at least the message. In some cases, a new error message pops up saying it can’t find the folder with the CD settings. In that case you have to uninstall iTunes 7.4.x, install 7.3.2, copy the CD folder to a safe location, uninstall iTunes 7.3.2, reinstall iTunes 7.4.x, install the GEAR driver, and copy the CD folder back.

I haven’t tried importing or burning a CD yet, but at least iTunes starts without pausing for me to click OK!

Tags: 64-bit, apple, drivers, GEAR, installation, itunes, vista, Windows

Yeah, I just got bit by that Vista “feature”… the one where your network slows down when you play music. That one, yeah.

I just added an index to our database, unfortunately from the client side. While I was chastising myself for doing it client-server instead of host-based, I was watching the number of records being updated per second. Hmm, about 400… maybe if I shutdown some programs. First, Sidebar – it displays some RSS feeds and weather information. OK, up to 420-440 records/sec. Not bad…

Then I remembered reading something about the Vista network stack and playing music files. I closed iTunes, and lo and behold: I now was updating about 1800 records/sec! Over 4 times as much??? Me thinks Vista has a problem there. This is on a dual-core 2.4GHz Intel with 2GB RAM.

ZDNet has an article with Microsoft’s response to the Vista network performance issue, and while some of the arguments may be true (only local network operations, two high priority drivers contending for the same resource, etc.), I still think it’s funny that a dual processor system would have its network performance so drastically reduced.

Anyone thinks it’s the DRM…? Anyone…?

Tags: DRM, itunes, Music, Network, performance, vista